IQware Delivers Immediate Innovations as U.S. Health Care Industry Feels Extreme Pressure to Evolve

According to globally recognized futurist and innovation expert David Croslin, few circumstances drive innovation faster than being in a state of war. The U.S. health care system is now in a state of war. Consumers, government regulators and enterprises are demanding change; otherwise, alternatives will be created and the current system will be shoved aside.

Four major events are creating a timeline that the existing health care system must meet in order to survive:

1. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Health Care Reform) passed in March 2010 will create an alternative health care system if the current one cannot evolve.

2. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Stimulus Funding) provides $37B to kickstart the evolution but acts as both a carrot with rewards and a stick with penalties.

3. The ICD-10 coding standard for medical records was passed by the United Nations in 1994 yet the U.S. has largely not deployed it. Current regulatory requirements will force its adoption.

4. There are growing demand for accountability and increased penalties for noncompliance under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as well as for data breaches involving protected health information (PHI).

These regulatory barrages on the current health care system are forcing change within an environment that has tremendous inertia against change. Change is risky and expensive, and evolving incorrectly will affect more than revenues - it will affect lives.

Croslin understands the limitations of the current U.S. health care system to evolve. Without a dramatically different approach, the existing IT infrastructure will not be able to meet the regulatory mandates or take advantage of the rewards offered by stimulus funding.

Croslin has joined IQware as CIO/CTO, stating: "IQware's patented technologies allow a completely different approach to how IT departments and systems evolve. The U.S. health care system desperately needs a way to become innovative overnight. IQware's foundational systems provide this innovative, evolutionary platform without incurring the traditional risk, complexity and expense. The ability to create unique solutions in record time that deliver secure and highly customizable and targetable applications is unique to IQware."

• 2010-09-28